The Para-Site of Governance: Transborder Regionalism in the Euregios

WPTC-01-03

Dr. Olivier Thomas Kramsch Nijmegen Centre for Border Research

Department of Human Geography Faculty of Policy Sciences

Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen Tel. (31) 24 361-2107 Fax (31) 24 361-1841 o.kramsch@bw.kun.nl

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The Para-Site of Governance: Transborder Regionalism in the Euregios

Drawing on a burgeoning academic literature devoted to issues of institutionalized cross-border regionalism within the European Union, the author attempts to theoretically contextualize observed cross-border dynamics as a problematic of “cosmopolitical governance”, defined by an ongoing deficit of socio-political rights and duties constitutive of forms of citizenship applicable to the uniquely trans-national environments of cross-border milieux. By exploring Kantian categories of aesthetic judgement and the forms of political community implicit in their manifestation of reason, the author posits a conceptual model of cosmopolitical right which adheres neither to the morally charged rationalities sustaining the liberal, modernist nation-state nor the Hobbesian rationalities characterizing inter-state relations, but is critically informed by the ethical demands required in achieving agreement around claims rooted in affect and the passions. As elaborated in a case study of tranfrontier labourers within the trans-border (and tri-lingual) Euregion Maas-Rhein, this Kantian “sensus communis” is meant to lead to the acknowledgement of a spatial and cultural politics capable of empowering cross-border regional actors in negotiating a measure of agency vis-à-vis nation-state communitarian logics.

“Des stations, des chemins font ensemble un systeme. Des points et des lignes, des etres et des

relations. On peut s’interesser a la construction du systeme, au nombre, a la disposition de ces stations,

de ces chemins. On peut s’interreser aussi au flux de communication qui passé par ces lignes.

Autrement dit, on peut avoir decrit formellement un systeme complexe, par exemple celui de Leibniz,

puis un systeme en general. On peut avoir saisi ce qui transite en eux et nommer ce transport du nom

propre d’Hermes. On peut avoir cherche leur formation et leur distribution, leurs frontiers, leurs bords

et leurs formes. Il faut pourtant ecrire des interceptions, des accidents du flux, en chemin, entre les

stations, de ses changements et metamorphoses… Comme un trou dans un canal fait que l’eau se

repand dans l’espace alentour. Il y a des fuites et des pertes, des obstacles, des opacites. Les portes, les

fenetres se ferment, Hermes peut mourir ou s’evanouir entre nous. Un ange passe. Qui a vole la

relation? Peut-etre quelqu’un, au milieu, la detourne-t-il. Existe-t-il un troisieme homme? Il n’est pas

question que du logiciel. Ce qui passé dans le chemin peut etre de l’argent, de l’or ou des

merchandises, de la nourriture, bref, du materiel. Il ne faut pas grande experience pour savoir qu’ils

n’arrivent pas si facilement a destination. Qu’il y a partout des intercepteurs qui travaillent a grands

frais a detourner, a devier ce qui transite au long des chemins. Le parasitisme est le nom donne le plus

souvent a ces nombreuses et diverses activites, dont je crains fort qu’elles constituent la chose du monde

la plus commune.” 1

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Since the early 1990s the European Union has accorded special importance to the development of its

former internal and existing external border regions as potentially key sites of economic dynamism

resulting from the economic integration and enlargement of European space2 . With the attainment of

EU structural financing capabilities, these cross-border euregios have become eligible since July, 1996

for INTERREG funds in the co-financing of local cross-border initiatives, involving programs of

technology transfer, the construction of transport linkages, transborder industrial training and labor

market development, the creation of joint leisure areas, and the establishment of consumer as well as

small business advisory services3. Future cross-border planning efforts have also been ensured by the

promotion in June, 1997 of the Draft European Spatial Development Perspective. Supported by

INTERREG IIc and III4, the primary goal of the ESDP is to promote transnational cooperation among

Member States’ planning and development strategies as a means of improving the impact of

Community policies on spatial development5. Supported by a purposively “bottom-up” planning

approach, the policy assumptions guiding both INTERREG and the ESDP are that increased

integration of spatial planning between Member States will contribute to an improved balance of

development, resulting in heightened levels of socio-economic cohesion and a more comprehensive

vision for transnational regions within the European Union.

Lacking a clear competence for European-wide spatial planning, however, the administrative

implementation of INTERREG and ESDP now involves a complex network of actors comprised of the

European Commission, Member States, regional and local authorities6. Within the framework of this

emerging “multilevel institutionalisation”7, subsidiarity conditions apply in the sense that Member

States, rather than the Commission, are responsible for the allocation of funds. Recommendations on

the distribution of funds and project evaluation are in turn the responsibility of joint monitoring groups

made up of representatives from national, regional and local authorities of each country within a given

joint cooperation area8. Given the diversity of governance mechanisms between the Commission,

Member States and the regions, and the largely voluntary nature of inter-governmental cooperation

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required for the administration of structural funds, there are significant differences in the

administrative bodies that have been set up to initiate, plan and implement cross-border cooperation

among the varied euregios of the European Union9.

The variability of cross-border administrative mechanisms has translated into a wide range of

operational outcomes in managing Euregional networks during the 1990s. While intermunicipal

cross-border cooperation under the aegis of Dutch-German-Belgian euregios, for example, has been

facilitated in areas sharing similar legislative systems, and can be considered a relative success in the

domain of environmental management, fire and disaster relief, as well as tourism promotion, the

overall record of economic, political, and cultural cross-border collaboration since the founding of the

Euregional program has fallen below expectations10. Similarly, despite the signing of a Benelux

Agreement on cross border cooperation in Brussels in September, 1986, offering local authorities the

possibility of collaborating within the framework of a public corporation or by formal administrative

agreement, few municipalities have taken advantage of this legislation11. For some observers the

constraints on increased transborder integration within the Euregions is attributable to the lack of a

harmonized and uniform tax structure, as well as the existence of uneven employment and social

security regulations prevailing within different Euregional subareas12. Others raise deeper issues of

public accountability by pointing to the small number of policy-makers at the helm of Euregional

projects and their often erratic financing mechanisms, including the relatively uncodified manner of

cooperation characterizing relations within distinct Euregional subareas (at times based on public or

civil law, at others on written declarations of intent, or in some cases with no formalization at all)13. A

frequent and persistent source of bottlenecks to further cross-border cooperation is also attributed to

cultural and linguistic differences, reflected across myriad workplace and leisure practices14.

Within the context of ongoing academic research, the development of a normative theoretical

framework shedding light on the evolving dynamics of transborder regionalism is still relatively

underdeveloped. Concepts drawn from urban regime theory15 and social constructivism16 have

recently surfaced, promising new avenues for investigation. In urban regime theory, however,

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functionalist explanations regarding cross-border cooperation dynamics predominate, as reflected in

accounts suggesting that differences in policy outcomes are closely related to the timing of

INTERREG projects with respect to ongoing cross-border initiatives17; divergent patterns of national

territorial organization; or the extent of territorial devolution in the implementation of Structural Funds

policies18. More despondent functionalist narratives propose INTERREG as entirely the supranational

creature of the European Union, and cross-border regionalism merely a promotional strategy or

opportunistic means of obtaining public subsidies19. Alternatively, social constructivist approaches

lean towards voluntarist narratives whereby the success/failure of euregional cross-border interactions

is attributed either to the particular political leverage of local INTERREG animateurs vis a vis agents

located at higher spatial scales20, to the faulty “mental maps” of entrepreneurs21 or to a surfeit of

nation-state “patriotism”22 on the part of local actors implementing cross-border urban development

projects23. Others24 have been more explicitly voluntarist, framing the difficulty as one of switching

“mind-sets traditionally fixed on the hinterland, on the interests of a particular nation-state, towards a

concern that is more universal, international” 25. Under these circumstances, perhaps badly

appropriating Milan Kundera, the transborder euregios suffer from an “unbearable lightness of being”,

defined by the lack of an adequate context within which the subjects of cross-border interaction

acquire historical and spatial “purpose” within a specifically transnational milieu.

Defining Cosmopolitical Governance

In what follows, I attempt to construct preliminary building blocks for such a contextual framework

through the notion of “cosmopolitical governance”. The reference to governance, by now a dominant

motif in debates over the nature and form of territorialized political community under conditions of

late capitalism, signals the increasing importance of meso-level institutions, located between the state

and market, serving to regulate the latter through diverse forms of associational networking linking

disparate political and economic communities of interest26. Significantly, it is increasingly observed

that cities and regions constitute key sites for the establishment of such forms of “institutional

thickness”27. The term “cosmopolitical” has come to acquire its own semantic density for those

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attempting to rethink the normative bases of economic and political community in the context of

accelerating transnational connectivity28. Additionally, the term has proved attractive for many on the

Left groping for a way beyond the reductionist stances of both neo-nationalist communitarianisms and

the narrow identity politics of American-style multiculturalism29.

Anchored within a more explicitly urban and regionalist agenda, the discourse of “cosmopolis” has

resonated strongly with those seeking to trace the lineaments of a broadly transfigured spatial order in

the shift from a self-styled era of modernity to one of a putatively globalized postmodernity30. Within

the horizon of this transition, during the age of modernity the cosmopolitical ideal sought to conjoin

the totality of rational knowledge of the cosmos (later the scientific understanding of natural

phenomena) with the enlightened political principles of the polis (the administration of cities) thus

serving to define the economic and political “order” of the modern nation-state, grounded in a notion

of sovereignty coterminous with the limits of state borders31. Within this territorial framework, the

idea of political and economic community was built on a notion of citizenship restricted to a specific,

national space separated from similarly bounded sovereign spaces, thus founding the basis of the

Westphalian interstate system bequeathed to us in our day32.

The procedural form of political community associated with the territorially bounded nation-state was

to be grounded in a conception of rights and duties attained through the self-interested use of the

rational human faculties, the latter conceived as separate from the body and the passions33. In Kantian

terms, the entirety of the known social order would come to be shaped by the antinomy of cognitive

judgment and the practical demands of nature, perceived as the realm of necessity lying beyond man’s

moral capacity to act in the world34. In this view, while the nation-state was infused with human

purposiveness and agency, the space between nation-states, the specific geography of interstate

relations, would remain in an “a-rational”, Rousseau-like “state of nature”, off-limits to human moral

investments35. For Kant, the outcome of such a Hobbesian compact in the sphere of international

relations would be made evident in the predatory European wars of the 18th century, calling for new

measures to ensure “perpetual peace” among nations36.

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But as Toulmin and others have shown, the broad sweep of modernity and its contemporary unfurling

cannot be exhausted by the dichotomous narrative implicated in the struggle between moral and

practical reason, between the “warmth” of national belonging and the “cold”, rational universalism of

cosmopolitan, interstate relations37. For a “hidden”, urban strand of cosmopolitical modernity,

secreted from the early Enlightenment geographical “peripheries” of Hume’s Edinburgh, Vico’s

Naples and Kant’s Konigsberg38, pointed to an alternative arrangement of the human faculties in their

relation to the polis, one which called for the simultaneous enlargement of the moral and spatial

imagination prior to the establishment of the rights and duties of national citizenship39. From such

city-regions thus emerged an alternative ethical and geographical order founded on the proposition of

reflective aesthetic judgement, whose spatially indeterminate form would ultimately result from the

desire to bridge the gap between the cognitive realm of freedom and the practical domain of nature,

without being entirely accommodated by the logic of either manifestation of reason40.

For Kant, the form of aesthetic judgement which in such a manner partially escapes cognition provides

special access to human purposiveness; such judgement, -- captured in the sympathies and the

passions, of affect and taste -- harboured the potential for creating a sensus communis grounded in the

communicability of pleasure and pain which, while representing a form of reason in its own right,

would not be subsumed under pre-existing universal categories and rules41. The point of departure of

this aesthetic rationality is what remains unaccounted for when all pragmatic and economic interests

have been removed, and likewise when all desire in the existence of objects has been subtracted42.

Thus, for Kant, aesthetic reflective judgement offers the possibility of achieving a normative

“kingdom of ends” rather than of instrumental means, but the demands necessary to transcend claims

of fact or moral value through the faculty of taste require an enlarged mentality which would “lay the

foundation of an extension of judgements of this kind of necessity for everyone” obtained by the

imperative to “think ourselves into the place of others”43. The form of judgement Kant locates in

affect and the passions vis a vis cognitive and practical reason thus becomes a basis with which to

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provide an opening for an ethical determination of the subject defined by responsibility towards

others.

The cosmopolitical imagination sketched here, while rejecting traditional communitarian notions of

rights and citizenship vested in territorially delimited communities defined by “unchosen

commonalities of history, belief, geography and civic culture”44, also departs from the looser,

Habermassian notion of “civic solidarity” rooted in forms of national “constitutional patriotism”45

(Table 1). It diverges as well from Rawlsian accounts of Kantian liberalism, which presents

cosmopolitan views as essentially “self-standing” representations grounded in a notion of rights

independent of their recognition by any given society or culture, and motivated by mere mutual

advantage resulting from individuals acting on the basis of rational self-interest alone46. Importantly,

Kant’s “imagination” -- invoked as the basis for an enlarged mentality -- is neither public nor private,

but “indeterminate with respect to both of these insofar as it is simply subjective”47.

In this context, aesthetic judgment, unlike cognitive and practical reason, is conceived as a uniquely

“deterritorialized” phenomenon stretching across national borders, as the geographical scope of

imaginative consensus required of it could in theory be limitless. Thus, rather than assume the

eventual convergence of cognitive, practical and aesthetic rationalities in one underlying form of

Reason, then -- fulfilling one promise of Enlightenment modernity -- the Kantian cosmopolitical ideal

sets aesthetic judgment apart as a category with its own moral and spatial imperatives which can be

subsumed neither under the terms of cognitive judgment (the sphere of morality) nor practical reason

(necessity/nature). And yet, throughout the course of Western modernity, the particular “difficulty”

associated with political community founded on the principles of Kant’s aesthetic judgment lay

precisely in its inability to carve an apriori space of cause-effect relations separate from these

categories of rational judgment. Precisely because aesthetic judgements do not “fall in to a province

of their own”48 -- as do cognitive and moral judgements -- there is a constant temptation to assimilate

the former to these categories49; never achieving “pure” differentiation from the realm of cognitive and

practical rationality, aesthetic judgements therefore perpetually find themselves in a contingent

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process of becoming, as yet-to-be-created50: the stuff of a cultural and spatial politics whose

geographical expression I suggest is played out in the assymetrical and tension-filled relationship

between state and non-state territorial forms of political and economic governance51.

Table 1

Typology of Citizenship/Democracy/Space Nexus

Philosophical Basis for Citizenship Rights

Potential Actor Space Qualitative Conditions of Social Bond

1) Liberal Universalism

EU, national public sphere Formal demands of egalitarian, rational, “free standing” individualized self-interest (ie., Rawlsian “veils of ignorance, Habermassian “solidarity” rooted in “ideal” speech acts)

2) Hard/Soft Variants of Communitarianism

Nation, region, locality Culture, history, shared traditions, “small stories” (Rorty), “ethics of care/obligation” (Benhabib), reciprocities of recognition/validation (Fraser)

3) Kantian “sensus communis”

“Cosmopolitical” public sphere; cross-border euregios; nation-state/region interaction as “parasitical” forum (Serres)

Aesthetic judgement grounded in an ethics implicit in affective social relations (Kant); towards a “radical democratic” cultural/spatial politics defined by a continual “slippage” in relating to “concrete” otherness (Mouffe); on need to get beyond “thin” layer of engagement of liberal universalism, while avoiding the trap of paternalistic toleration characteristic of “soft” communitarianism (Rocco).

Source: Adapted from Rocco, R. (1999) “Solidarity, reciprocity and recognition: confronting pluralism, reconfiguring democratic citizenship in a transnational context”, paper prepared for the Symposium Transnationalism: Perspectives from Spain, Latin America and the U.S. University of California, Los Angeles. May 5-8.

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Caught in the (Im)passe of Kantian Reason: the Predicament of Transfrontier Workers

Such a tension between discrepant scales of territorial governance is well illustrated by the dynamic of

cross-border labour markets within the European Union. Aiming to devise a formula to avoid the

double-taxation of cross-border workers subsequent to European economic integration, numerous

Member States have established a regime derogatoire whereby cross-border labourers are mandated to

pay income taxes only in the country in which they reside (even if the income is generated elsewhere),

and are levied social security payments based on their country of employment52. The juridical basis of

fiscal duties and obligations in the cross-border territorial context is codified within bilateral legal

frameworks involving Member States. Social security issues, on the other hand, are subject to

European Union legislation53. In principle, this latter system allows Member States to establish their

own social security regimes under the condition that they apply non-discriminatory principles in their

design and application at national levels. This is meant to ensure European-wide parity among

employers in the payment of social security compensation, as well as for benefits accruing to workers

circulating within the EU and those remaining within their national territories.

The regulation of cross-border taxation and social security within the European Union is thus

predicated on a specific regime travailleurs frontaliers, which in turn is based on a somewhat

paradoxical legal “construction” of the transborder labourer. On the one hand, the definition of such a

worker is partly shaped by the physical routines of time-geography, perceived as someone who lives

within a border region and returns daily or at least once a week to her place of residence54. But other

elements of this regime are more subjective. The stipulation that cross-border workers pay taxes in

their country of residence, for instance, is predicated on the assumption that as residents they are more

rationally qualified to judge the uses to which those monies are dedicated than those residing

elsewhere, justified by virtue of the location and nature of the collective goods consumed. In this,

fiscal obligations and the rights flowing thereby are derived from a relatively strong communitarian

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notion of citizenship rooted in a primary loyalty to the nation-state. In the case of social security, on

the other hand, a more “deterritorialized” notion of citizenship holds, derived from the rights of non-

discrimination and equality of circumstances pertaining to labourers working in disparate national

contexts. Such rights are rooted in a liberal universalist conception of the individual, whose primary

allegiance is to an abstraction: the European worker, from which no affective relation is required.

The transborder Euregion is the space where both principles of governance -- the one communitarian,

the other liberal-universalist -- collide. The consequences are more than theoretical, however, as they

result directly in the production of ongoing socio-economic inequality within the transborder regional

milieu. For instance, in the case where cross-border workers are required to increase their social

security payments in their place of employment, such a system will ultimately place them at a

disadvantage vis a vis their worker-colleagues; as the effects of the measure on the latter will be

“neutralized” by a corresponding reductions in their fiscal obligations, the former will be doubly

burdened as they will continue to be taxed at the rate applicable to their alternate country of residence.

Moreover, given the frequency of legal modifications made to national fiscal and social security

legislation on both sides of national borders, it is not uncommon for the net revenues of cross-border

labourers to be subjected to the instabilities characteristic of an annual “lottery”, whereby the balance

of fiscal and social security burdens can shift unpredictably from one year to the next55. The disparity

here between the “visionary” rhetoric of European integration and the structural constraints on cross-

border mobility is thus starkly etched.

Hence, a mustard seed of “discontent” festers within Europe’s cosmopolis-in-the-making. In this

light, and perhaps not merely metaphorically, cross-border labourers caught within this dynamic

literally shuttle back and forth across different “territories” of Kantian reason, defined by nationalist-

communitarian and liberal universalist claims to citizenship (modelled on the realms of cognitive and

practical reason, respectively). In crossing the borders of the euregio in search of work, they thus

embody the Enlightenment dream of reconciling the spaces of nature/necessity and freedom. The

predicament of ongoing socio-economic inequality produced by this spatial “fissure” within

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Enlightenment reason can thus be interpreted as a sign of the unfulfilled and tension-laden nature of

modernity’s promise. I suggest that it is largely because of this legacy of modernity, grounded in

competing claims of citizenship underpinning disparate levels of territorial governance, that localized,

cross-border institutional initiatives aimed at guiding development within the euregions are incapable

of adequately addressing problems occurring within their territorial jurisdiction. As an empirical case

study of such institutional “failure”, I turn to the experience of one of the longest-running experiments

in cross-border governance in Europe, located within the tri-national and tri-lingual Euregio Maas-

Rhein.

The Maas-Rhein “Stichting” and the Cosmopolitical Limits of Private-law Governance

Established as an informal “working group” of cross-border partner regions in 1976 at the instigation

of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, the Euregion Maas-Rhein constitutes one of the oldest

institutionalised transborder euregios in the European Union56. In 1991 the Euregion acquired the

juridical status of a foundation under the terms of Dutch private-law, embodied in the Stichting

Euregio Maas-Rhein. From this time on, the Stichting has served the development needs of a cross-

border community of approximately 3.7 million inhabitants, encompassing the southern portion of the

province of Dutch Limburg; the Province of Belgian Limburg; the Province of Liege; the German-

speaking Community of Belgium; and the Aachen Regio (Figure 1 – see Appendix). The population

under its jurisdiction, partaking of Dutch, Flemish, Walloon and German languages and cultures, is

thus the most culturally and geographically complex of the Euregions lining the border of the

Netherlands, Germany and Belgium. Housed in the seat of government of the Dutch Province of

Limburg in Maastricht, the Stichting is the principle institutional interlocutor between provincial,

national and European actors in the selection, implementation and management of cross-border

initiatives within the Euregion, ranging from the promotion of transborder economic cooperation,

public transportation, environmental protection, technology transfer and tourism57.

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Organizationally, the Stichting is comprised of an Executive Committee, which acts as its primary

decision-making body, and is assisted by consultative organ, the Euregional Council (Figure 2 – see

Appendix). Established in January, 1995, the Council represents one of the few instances of

transborder parliamentarianism within the European Union; its 118 members, rather than elected by

popular suffrage, are nominated by the different political, economic and social actors found within

each partner region, which include established political parties, chambers of commerce, labor unions,

and universities (Figure 3 [in Appendix] reveals the breakdown of Euregional Council members by

partner region and political party). The Stichting is further made up of a central bureau entrusted with

managing public relations on behalf of the Euregion, as well as co-ordinating various working

commissions and steering groups engaged in the direct management of INTERREG structural fund

budgets and projects. Within INTERREG, a Commission of Experts (Stuurgroep) provides aid in co-

ordinating Euregional projects with other institutional actors, including universities, municipalities,

labor unions, employment agencies and chambers of commerce. The Stichting’s commissions and

steering groups, composed of experts from all five partner regions, are grouped according to four

broad themes: Structural Policy-making, Socio-economic Activities, Socio-cultural Activities, and

Social Issues58. The annual program of INTERREG-funded projects within Maas-Rhein is broken

down further into two general thematic axes, defined by socio-economic and socio-cultural criteria.

The funding of individual projects is subject to various co-financing arrangements involving the

European Regional Development Fund (FEDER), the Maas-Rhein Stichting and public and private-

sector actors situated within the immediate cross-border environment. For any given project, the

Stichting commits itself to half the financing, the remainder being paid either wholly by the partner

region or via a burden sharing scheme involving provincial governments and local economic agents59.

Despite an elaborate organisational structure geared to channelling INTERREG structural funds into

the Maas-Rhein Euregion, the experience of the Stichting and its partners in stimulating cross-border

development has met with mixed success over the course of the 1990s. Perhaps reflecting the low

level of R&D within the Euregion as a whole, attempts at technology transfer within Maas-Rhein have

met with ambiguous results. In the Aachen subarea the Aachener Gesellschaft fur Innovation und

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Technologietransfer (AGIT) is a strong regional body responsible for promoting business start-ups and

spin-offs, regional technology transfer, as well as the marketing of the Aachen region60. In South

Limburg two nationally designated organisations, the Innovation Centre and the Industriebank LIOF,

also engaged in technology transfer and consultancy. In Belgian Limburg the Gewestelijke

Ontwikkelings Maatschappij (GOM) is the main regional development body, focusing on attracting

inward investment. The regional development organisation in Liege, the Societe Provinciale

d’Industrialisation (SPI) concentrates fully on real estate management offering inward investors

suitable site locations. And the technology transfer agency at the University of Liege, INTERFACE,

is considered the main technology transfer unit in this subarea. But during the past decade cross-

border technology transfer and networking between these bodies have proven to be difficult and slow,

reflecting an uneasy mixture of competition and co-operation marking their alliance.

Similarly, although the variety of public research universities in the Euregion is large, cross-border

technology transfer among them is observed to have occurred at a generally modest scale61. Despite

the establishment of a Euregional Transfer Agency (ETRA) to co-ordinate technology transfer from

universities to firms within the Euregion, advanced research facilities located in the environs of

Aachen – including the largest technical university in Europe, Technical University RWTH, the

Polytechnic Aachen, the Federal Research Center Julich and the Fraunhofer Institutes for Laser

Technology and Production Technology – are generally neglected by economic actors in South

Limburg and Belgian Limburg62. Moreover, although cross-border unions and professional

associations for the machine-building trades were forged in Maas-Rhein during the 1980s and 1990s

(such as the Technologie-Arbeitskreis der Euregio, the MHAL-Initiative, or the Ingenieurvereinigung

Dreilander-Ingenieurkontakt [DIK]), technology transfer has been particularly weak flowing from the

German into the Dutch and Belgian sub areas of the Euregion63.

The whole Maas-Rhein Euregion now stands at an economic crossroads, grappling with problems of

industrial conversion in its mining sector and searching for an appropriate developmental pathway

drawing from new technologies and cross-border synergies at a time when traditional forms of

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regional policymaking rooted in Fordist labor-state compromises supporting coal production and the

attraction of inward investment are being supplanted by initiatives supporting the endogenous

development of small- to medium-sized firms64. Yet despite similar traditional production structures

throughout the Euregion, attempts to co-ordinate economic reconversion efforts across the Dutch,

German and Belgian subareas have remained negligible65. In the Dutch subarea, industrial conversion

has largely been completed by transforming state mines into a large chemical concern; Aachen has

engineered its conversion on the presence of the largest European technical university in that city,

which has lead to the establishment of hundreds of small engineering and consultancy firms66; and

over the past decade manufacturing in the Belgian parts of the Euregion has largely been supplanted

by service industries67. For some observers, the economic performance of these sectors in Dutch and

Belgian Limburg illustrates a positive, ongoing “peripheralization” of Flemish industry68.

Nevertheless, others cannot avoid the overall conclusion that each part of the Euregion has followed

different restructuring policies devised at national government levels, with a national orientation to

prevailing knowledge networks69.

The relatively limited success of the Stichting in achieving cross-border socio-economic integration is

related to the fact that its mandate is restricted to a purely consultative role vis a vis member states and

the EU. This limitation is further reflected in that the Stichting is legally proscribed from intervening

in matters related to spatial planning and the regulation of local labor markets70. As expressed in a

recent Euregional policy document, this condition has rendered “problematic” the approval of projects

involving large financial sums within the Euregion, a matter which can only be resolved through the

“transfer of [economic] means between [corresponding territorial] domains of action… [a matter

which] would not be possible without the assent of DG XVI”71. This “caveat” to subsidiarity has

significantly shaped the profile of INTERREG initiatives sponsored during the latter half of the 1990s;

within the first phase of INTERREG implementation (1996-1999), a larger amount was spent on

socio-cultural than on socio-economic initiatives72. “The socio-cultural (realm) was not expensive”,

this author was told by an INTERREG manager for the Belgian province of Liege. “And besides,

culture was at least within the competence of the provincial governments”73. In the ensuing years,

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socio-cultural initiatives of the Stichting have included the support of transborder music festivals,

dance and theatre. Since January , 1997, the Stichting has also successfully nurtured a transborder

regional press agency, entitled Euregio Media, comprised of public broadcasting operators within each

partner region: WDR Studio Aachen, BRF Eupen, RTBF Liege, BRTN Radio 2 Hasselt, and Omroep

Limburg.

On the socio-economic front, given the Stichting’s limited competencies, intervention has been

restricted largely to an information gathering and dissemination mode. Within the realm of economic

innovation and technology transfer, for instance, the actions of the Stichting have been confined to the

publication of materials aimed at fomenting contact between professional communities within the five

partner regions, taking inventory of existing regional technological capacity, organizing annual

exchange programs, and conducting site visits to cross-border regions within the EU of comparable

technological scale. In this spirit of improved cross-border regional “transparency”, the Maas-Rhein

Stichting was chosen by the European Union in 1992 to host a pioneering information dissemination

program targeting its cross-border working population (EURES). Convening employers, an

interregional labor council and various regional employment agencies74, including political

representatives at the provincial and EC level, the Stichting-operated steering committee responsible

for EURES attempts to provide the Maas-Rhein’s cross-border labor force the same information

available to public and private-sector firms, with the ultimate aim of improving cross-border

mobility75. Within the framework of a bi- and multi-lateral cooperation program promoted “on the

ground” by a working staff of self-designated “Euro-counsellors”, EURES seeks to improve

communication and dialogue between those bodies concerned with the provision of employment

within the partner regions, as well as offering the cross-border labor community information relating

to employment supply and demand, changing labor market conditions and variable quality of life

issues76.

In June, 1996 the various organizations informally overseeing issues of cross-border labor mobility

within the euregio were gathered into a consultative “round table”, thus expanding the potential scope

16

for civil society participation in the coordination of cross-border labor market services beyond that

provided by EURES77. By opening a channel of communication with European parliamentarians, this

“round table” attempted to increase the political leverage of local transborder actors vis a vis Member

States. With the support of such a platform, a grouping of mayors from the five Maas-Rhein partner

regions has promoted a political agenda seeking aid from their respective national governments

specifically addressing the unresolved predicament of cross-border workers78. But as it involves only

European and regional scales of territorial governance, EURES, despite all its goodwill, is incapable

of influencing national labor market regulations affecting its partner regions. The Achilles Heel of the

Euregion is that fiscal and social security issues remain a matter for policy-making at the Member

State level. For one top INTERREG administrator based in Maastricht, this means basically that

Stichting “can only give signals”79. Essentially, the [Euregional] Commission has “no decision-

making powers of its own, it has geen been om op de staan”80.

In an effort to address such weaknesses, the Stichting has embarked on an ambitious restructuring

plan, a core element of which is defined by the transformation of the foundation’s legal framework

from private to public-law statute. This is meant to produce a “harmonization” of territorial

competencies by increasing the power of local actors within the Stichting’s Executive Committee, and

by more clearly “delineating the relationship between the foundation and the Euregional Council”81.

Under this framework, the structure of the Euregional Council is to be transformed into a bicameral

consultative assembly, the one made up of political representatives, the other comprised of non-

governmental groups. Four new commissions directly responsible to the Executive Committee and the

Council are to be created to replace previous commissions and steering groups, the former composed

of representatives of both the Council and functionaries from the partner regions. Moreover, the

Executive Committee of the Stichting is newly empowered to create temporary ad hoc working groups

as the need arises. Taken as a whole, these changes are made to produce greater decision-making

flexibility within the Stichting and improve its democratic accountability with the cross-border

community at-large. According to one leading INTERREG manager, the increased presence of local

social actors within the top decision-making echelons of the Stichting are necessary because in the

17

previous arrangement “politicians didn’t work well together with civil society… [there was] little trust

of civil actors”82.

But in determining the system of representation of political and civil society actors within the newly

created Council, or Euregioraad, national prerogatives seem once again to have trumped the needs of

local social actors. An initial scheme to share the representation of political and civil society equally

had to be abandoned, as “politicians wanted a greater voice in guiding INTERREG projects” and

“Christian and Social Democrats wanted an equal number of seats”83. Since all the political parties

within the Euregion could not be accommodated within the Euregioraat under the original framework,

the initial system of representation has had to be shifted to one which is 70 percent political, with the

remainder of seats for the entire Euregion alloted to civil society actors. Unsurprisingly, as a result of

this such actors have felt “a bit used, misused”84.

Traversing the Kantian “Kluft”? Preliminary Notes Towards Cosmopolitical Governance in the

Euregios

Despite gestures of internal organisational restructuring, it appears that in the near future the dynamic

of the Stichting will continue to be disproportionately influenced by agents drawing their political

legitimacy from national and EU scales of territorial governance, to the detriment of local cross-border

civil society actors. In straining for greater democratic legitimacy and “transparency”, the tensions

that riven the Kantian field of theoretical and practical reason -- the moral-cognitive domain and the

realm of nature-necessity -- are resolved in favor of the former at the expense of a language of rights

applicable within a truly transnational, cross-border context. This “inability” to cross the Kantian

divide of practical reason does not augur well in addressing issue areas which transcend the nation-

state framework, as revealed by the contradictions inherent in the existing cross-border labor market of

the euregio. The question is thus posed: what preconditions would be needed to achieve a type of

territorial governance more attuned to the needs of transnational interest groups directly affected by

cross-border initiatives85? What forms of rationality should be called on to guide its underlying

18

action-frameworks? If there is an ethico-political dimension to this form of rationality, how should it

be conceptualized analytically?

I suggest that a critical reworking of Kant’s “sensus communis” may point to the type of renewed

geographical imagination required to achieve the cosmopolitical promise, the “perpetual peace” of

Europe’s contemporary transborder euregios. This cross-border sensus, which I believe may draw

fruitfully from the language of post-realist international relations theory in a “register of freedom”86,

may be conceptualized neither from the standpoint of a morally transcendent universal – Kant’s realm

of cognitive reason, circumscribed by the nation-state -- nor from an a-moral realism which –

reflecting the Kantian domain of nature governing inter-state relations – is subject to the practical

reason of Hobbesian necessity. Rather, I suggest it derives from a space which accepts a dynamic and

unresolvable tension between both forms of rationality as they “unfurl” within the evolving

geographical trajectories of discrepant cross-border settings. It is the peculiar and persistent “gap”

between either form of reason, and the “dissatisfaction” produced by such a discrepancy, that forms

the context and provides the key to understanding the historical specificity of the particular cultural

politics encountered within each transborder milieu 87.

What is such a politics made of? How is it to be examined empirically? How are its spaces inhabited

and who are its primary agents? In the case of the Maas-Rhein euregio I suggest they are partly

located within the “theatre” of the Stichting and its Euregional satellites, and is defined by that

“unease” which leads its members to call for an internal restructuring in order to become more

accountable to its “citizens”. It is also embodied in the rationalities of actors located outside the

fortress-like building of the Stichting88, in that “surplus” of energy which is the street, the shopping

district, the café, the realm of disinterested Nachbarschaft. It is the “silent” bond suspended between

the two. It thus has a particular relation to “expert knowledge” in that it operates within the horizon of

legislative reason, but also escapes it and “walks freely” in the planned space of the city89. It is not so

much a form of “resistance” as a negotiated space of surprise, as movement situated off-stage from

orchestrated tri-cultural gatherings. It thus finds the space of national sovereignty “useful” the better

19

to measure its distance, requiring it like the parasite its host90. It partakes of the Stichting’s language

of “accountability” and “transparency”, infusing efforts to create a transborder information service for

cross-border workers, attempting to instil in the euregio’s inhabitants a sense of shared border identity,

but it also happens without fanfare or prompting, working outside the eddies of this discourse with the

“naturalness” evoked by a woman observed by the author at the central train station in Liege who,

when aided by others helping her son descend, offers her thanks in Dutch (“bedankt, meneer”), then

French (“merci, merci bien”), in low, muffled tones. So, dissatisfied with the closed self-referentiality

of its “partner-region” identities, the Kantian sensus implicitly offers a call and response to territories

“beyond” Europe, quietly drawing attention to them, without fuss.

Finally, against the grain of post-modern accounts of international relations studies calling for a type

of theorizing without location, from a void or no-place91, the Kantian sensus also embraces the

“foreign” social scientist-ethnographer traversing the space of the transborder euregio, smelling the

differences, eyeing the similarities and the discrepancies from the train window, in the throng of foot

traffic (Kant’s invitation to “think [oneself] into the place of others…when communicating with

them”). It is a sensibility thus partly rooted in spaces of affect: in taste and sense and touch, working

with but also moving beyond the a priori legislative categories of electoral judgement and “objective”

scientific detachment. Cosmopolitical freedom thereby navigates between the islands of Kantian

reason somewhat like a stowaway aboard a ship, in the sense of being “hidden”92. It seeks neither

transcendental universals nor the complacency of realist cynicism; it survives on the tension between

these antinomies of spatialized reason, abiding on their border, like Hermes, the ancient, “unprotected”

and melancholy God of mobility93.

Acknowledgements: I would like to thank Mathew Sparke, Wolfgang Zierhofer, Nicole Ehlers, Odile

Heddebaut and two anonymous reviewers for thoughtful and constructive criticism on an earlier draft

of this paper. A special note of gratitude to Ed Soja, for indulging my Kantian compulsion over coffee

one beautiful Spring day in London. All errors are assumed to be the author’s own.

20

Appendix

21

22

23

24

NOTES

1 M.Serres, Le Parasite (Paris: Hachette 1980) pp. 29-30.

2 P. Nijkamp, ‘Towards a Network of Regions: The United States of Europe’, European Planning Studies 1/ 2 (1993) pp. 149-68; R. Cappelin and P.W.J. Batey (eds.), Regional Networks, Border Regions and European Integration (London: Pion 1993); S. Handy, M. Hart, L. Albrechts and A. Katos, An Enlarged Europe: Regions in Competition? (London: Jessica Kingsley 1995). 3 H. Krebs, and W. van Geffen, ‘Netherlands-Germany: Euregio’, in European Commission. Directorate-General for Regional Policies, Interregional and Cross-Border Cooperation in Europe (Brussels: Ecotech Research and Consulting, Ltd 1994); N. Ehlers, Euregio’s – Een Geslaagde Verbintenis?: Een Onderzoek naar de Grensoverschrijdende Samenwerking van Gemeenten Binnen Euregio’s in het Nederlands-Duitse Grensgebied (Nijmegen 1996). 4 INTERREG I was established to cover the 1990-1993 period; INTERREG IIc extended this initial phase from 1994 to 1999. On April 28, 2000, guidelines for INTERREG III were approved for the period covering 2000-2006. 5 A. Faludi, ‘The European Spatial Development Perspective – What Next?’, European Planning Studies 8/2 (2000) pp. 237-250; A. Faludi ,‘European Spatial Development Policy in “Maastricht II”?’, European Planning Studies 5/4 (1997) pp. 535-543; V. Nadin and D. Shaw, ‘Transnational Spatial Planning in Europe: the Role of INTERREG IIc in the UK’, Regional Studies 32.3 (1998) pp. 281-299. 6 Commission of the European Communities, Europe 2000+: Cooperation for European Territorial Development (COPEC: Luxembourg 1994); Commission of the European Communities, Europe 2000: Outlook for the Development of the Community’s Territory (COPEC: Luxembourg 1991). 7 J.W. Scott, ‘European and North American Contexts for Cross-Border Regionalism’, Regional Studies 33.7 (1998) pp. 605-617. 8 Nadin and Shaw (note 5). 9 H. Martinos and A. Caspari, Cooperation Between Border Regions for Local and Regional Development (The Innovation Development Planning Group, prepared for the Commission of the European Communities Directorate – General XVI 1990); R. Hassink, B. Dankbaar and F. Corvers, ‘Technology Networking in Border Regions: Case Study of the Euregion Maas-Rhine’, European Planning Studies 3/1 (1995) pp. 63-83. 10 H. Breuer, Freie und Geplante Entwicklungen von Ersatzindustrien: Untersuchungen zum Industriellen Strukturwandel mit Besonderer Berucksichtigung der Sudlichen Neuengland-Staaten der USA und von Niederlandisch Sudlimburg (Aachen: Geographisches Institut der Rheinisch-Westfalischen Technischen Hochschule, Informationen und Materialien zur Geographie der Euregio Maas-Rhein 1984); L. Beerts, Het produktiemilieu van Limburg in Grensoverschrijdend Perspectief: Enkele Aspecten van het Produktiemilieu in Limburg in Relatie tot het Omringende Buitenland (Maastricht: Economisch Technologisch Instituut Limburg 1988); R. Hamm and R. Kampmann, ‘Probleme Kleinraumlicher Europarischen Integration: ‘Euregio Rhein Maas Nord”’, RW1 Mitteilungen 36 (1995) pp. 163-188; M. van Geenhuizen, ‘Barriers to Technology Transfer: the Role of Intermediary Organizations’, in J. Cuadrado, P. Nijkamp and P. Salva (eds.), Moving Frontiers: Economic Restructuring, Regional Development and Emerging Networks (Aldershot: Avebury 1994). 11 J.L. Soeters, ‘Managing Euregional Networks’, Organizational Studies 14 (1992). 12 Krebs and van Geffen (note 3). 13 A.A.L.G.M. Kessen, Bestuurlijke Vernieuwing in Grensgebieden: Een Onderzoek Naar Intergemeentelijke Grensoverschrijdende Samenwerking in het Nederlands/Belgisch Grensgebied (PhD thesis, Faculty of Policy Sciences, University of Nijmegen 1992); F. Corvers, B. Dankbaar and R. Hassink, Nieuwe Kansen voor Bedrijven in Grensregios (Maastricht: MERIT/’S – Gravenhage: COB/SER 1994).

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14 C. van Beek, Samenwerking? Er Zijn Grenzen! Onderzoek naar de Invloed van de Culturele Factor op het Process van Economische en Politiek-bestuurlijke Integratie in de Euregio Maas-Rijn (Rotterdam in Tilburg: Barjesteh, Meeuwes & Co. 1996). 15 M. Perkmann, ‘Building Governance Institutions Across European Borders’, Regional Studies 33.7 (1998) pp. 657-667. 16 A. Paasi, Territories, Boundaries and Consciousness: the Changing Geographies of the Finnish-Russian Border (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons 1996); H. van Houtum, The Development of Cross-Border Economic Relations (Tilburg: Center for Economic Research, Tilburg University 1997); J. Hakli ‘Cross-Border Regionalisation in the “New Europe” – Theoretical Reflection with Two Illustrative Examples’, Geopolitics and International Boundaries 3/3 (1998) pp. 83-103. 17 INTERREG is thus perceived as more attuned to local needs when supporting a pre-existing pattern of transborder cooperation and more prone to technocratic, nationally-driven development agendas when grafted onto a cross-border policy vacuum (see Perkmann, note 15 p. 662). 18 Perkmann (note 15) p.662. 19 Scott (note 7) p.613. 20 Scott (note 7) p.663. 21 van Houtum (note 16). 22 Scott (note 7) p.610. 23 I am not arguing here that such social constructivist accounts are necessarily untrue, only that, by remaining in a largely descriptive expository narrative mode, they implicitly replicate a static and Hobbesian view of socio-spatial relations characteristic of “realist” theories of international relations [A. Linklater, Men and Citizens in the Theory of International Relations (London: LSE and Political Science 1982)]. As social-scientists I suggest we must remain aware of the reciprocal nature of thought in relation to practice “on the ground”, and therefore struggle with normative language capable of revealing possible “futures” to the historical unfolding of political community inhabiting the various transborder regions of the EU [J.J. Linz and A. Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe (Baltimore and London: The John Hopkins University Press 1996)]. 24 D. Vanneste, ‘La Flandre: Un Puzzle d’Euregions et de Cooperations Transfrontalieres’, Hommes et Terres du Nord 3 (1998) pp. 155-168. 25 Translated from the French by author. 26 B. Jessop, ‘The Regulation Approach, Governance and Post-Fordism’, Economy and Society 24/3 (1995) pp. 307-333. 27 A. Amin and N. Thrift, ‘Living in the Global’, in A Amin and N Thrift (eds.), Globalization, Institutions and Regional Development in Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1994); P. Le Gales, ‘Regulations and Governance in European Cities’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 22/3 (1998) pp. 482-503. 28 D. Held, Democracy and the Global Order: from the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press 1995); D. Held (ed.), Prospects for Democracy: North, South, East, West (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press 1993); D. Archibugi, D. Held and M. Kohler (eds.), Re-imagining Political Community: Studies in Cosmopolitan Democracy (Oxford: Polity Press 1998).

29 Within the English-language world, see M. Nussbaum, For Love of Country: Debating the Limits of Patriotism (Boston: Beacon Press 1996); T. Brennan, At Home in the World: Cosmopolitanism Now (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1997); P. Cheah and B. Robbins (eds.), Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press 1998); B. Robbins, Feeling Global:

26

Internationalism in Distress (New York: New York University Press 1999); I. Hacking, ‘Our Fellow Animals’, The New York Review of Books XLVII/11 (June, 2000) pp. 20-26; Theory, Culture and Society Centre Conference, ‘Cosmopolis: Democratising Global Economy and Culture’ (Helsinki: June 2-4, 2000); D. Archibugi, ‘Cosmopolitics’ New Left Review, 15 (2000) pp.137-150; C.A. Breckenridge, S. Pollock, H.K. Bhabha and D. Chakrabarty, ‘Cosmopolitanisms’ Public Culture 12/3 (2001). Complementary French standpoints can be culled from J. Kristeva, Nations Without Nationalism [trns. Leon S. Roudiez] (New York: Columbia University Press 1993); P. Bourdieu, Acts of Resistance: Against the New Myths of our Time [trsn. Richard Nice] (Cambridge: Polity Press1998). 30 E.W. Soja, Postmetropolis: Critical Studies of Cities and Regions (London: Blackwell 2000); E.W. Soja, Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places (London: Blackwell 1996); L. Sandercock, Cosmopolis: Planning for Multicultural Cities (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons 1998). 31 S. Toulmin, Cosmopolis: the Hidden Agenda of Modernity (New York: The Free Press 1994); Soja (note 30) p.229. 32 J. Agnew, ‘The Territorial Trap: the Geographical Assumptions of International Relations Theory’, Review of International Political Economy 1 (1984) pp. 53-80; D. Heater, World Citizenship and Government: Cosmopolitan Ideas in the History of Western Political Thought (London: Macmillan Press 1996); A. Linklater, ‘Citizenship and Sovereignty in the Post-Westphalian European State”, in D. Archibugi, D. Held and M. Kohler (eds.), Re-imagining Political Community: Studies in Cosmopolitan Democracy. (Oxford: Polity Press 1998). 33 A.O. Hirschmann, The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before its Triumph (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1977). 34 I. Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View [trns by Mary J. Gregor] (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff 1974); A.J. Cascardi, The Consequences of Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1999). 35 Held (note 28). 36 I. Kant, Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Essay [trans. by M. Campbell Smith] (Paternoster Square, London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co., Ltd. 1795/1903). 37 Nussbaum (note 29). 38 In a footnote to the Preface of his Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff 1974), Kant explicitly highlights the role of his home city-state in facilitating that “knowledge of the world” capable of extending the range of anthropology as a disciplinary science:

“A city such as Konigsberg on the River Pregel – a large city, the center of a state, the seat of the government’s provincial councils, the site of a university (for cultivation of the sciences), a seaport connected by rivers with the interior of the country, so that its location favors traffic with the rest of the country as well as with neighboring or remote countries having different languages and customs – is a suitable place for broadening one’s knowledge of man and of the world. In such a city, this knowledge can be acquired even without travelling.” (p.4, footnote)

Granted, the decidedly “imperial” ambitions to which this knowledge was subsequently put to use are not to be whitewashed on the basis of this citation [on this, see S.L. Malcomson’s cautionary insights, ‘The Varieties of Cosmopolitan Experience’, in P. Cheah and B. Robbins (eds.), Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press 1998) p. 237]. Restricted to Konigsberg, however, Kant is admittedly recuperated here as a “provincial” European philosopher [D. Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 2000)]. But within the broader context of my cosmopolitical argument, such a “regionalization” of European philosophy hides more than it reveals, as it points to the production of certain early-Enlightenment urban milieux acting as the seedbeds of discrepant, non-universalist, cosmopolitical action-frameworks. An appropriate precedent, I suggest, for approaching incipient 21st century transborder euregios [for a recent endorsement of this idea, see D. Harvey, ‘Cosmopolitanism and the Banality of Geographical Evils’, Public Culture, 12/3 (2000)].

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39 In the “Preface” to the first edition of the Critique of judgement, Kant refers to a critique which “sifts these faculties one and all, so as to try the possible claims of each of the other faculties to share in the clear possession of knowledge from roots of its own” [cited in A. Cascardi, Consequences of Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1999) p.3]. It would be the later task of the Romantic tradition to reinscribe value with fact and thereby to endow a disenchanted empirical world with the powers of self-animating spirit” (ibid: 15). 40 Cascardi (note 39). 41 This formulation goes beyond the post-structuralist critique of universals by reconstructing the very notion of universal validity as it relates to subjectively grounded claims, highlighting the role of the passions in shaping human purposiveness vis a vis the contingency of the world. Here, the Kantian principle of reflective aesthetic judgement models a form of reason that doesn’t proceed according to concepts, but rather begins from a process of reflection on those relations that resist, escape or are lost to conceptual thought, including the so-called “primary” experiences of pleasure and pain [Cascardi (note 39) pp.16-17, 55]. In this context, “reflective” judgement differs from “determinant” judgements in that whereas the latter subsumes particulars to pre-given, universal laws, in the former only particulars are given. A universal term found to govern such “free particulars” is located in the talent for “selecting what is exactly right in a certain case (iudicium discretivum) [Kant (note 38) p. 96]. 42 Cascardi (note 39) p.56. 43 Alternative translations have referred to this attitude as thinking “from the standpoint of everyone else” [cited in Cascardi (note 39), p. 34], but I suggest this is an a-spatial, Archimedean perspective that is ethically as well as analytically untenable. Rather, emphasis is placed here on the mutually transformative experience of cosmopolitical thinking, as the principle of “enlarged mentality” is for Kant an analogue for the subject’s thinking autonomously and consistently (ibid). As with Hume and Rousseau, Kant’s enlarged mentality requires a mutuality of affect, a “thinking with” which is every bit as much as a “feeling with” [Cascardi (note 39) p.36)]. Critically, such a disposition is invoked not in abstract rumination about others, but “when communicating with them” [Kant (note 38) p.72]. The inherently inter-subjective and spatially contextual nature of cosmopolitical judgment is thereby underscored [E. Isin and P. Wood, Citizenship and Identity (London: SAGE 1999)]. 44 M. Walzer, Thick and Thin: Moral Arguments at Home and Abroad (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press 1994). 45 J. Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere [trns. T. Burger with the assistance of F. Lawrence] (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 1989); T. McCarthy, ‘On Reconciling Cosmopolitan Unity and National Diversity’, Public Culture 11/1 (1999) pp. 198-200. 46 R. Bellamy and D. Castiglione, ‘Between Cosmopolis and Community: Three Models of Rights and Democracy within the European Union’, in D Archibugi, D Held and M Kohler (eds.), Re-imagining Political Community: Studies in Cosmopolitan Democracy (Oxford: Polity Press 1998) pp.159, 164. 47 Cascardi (note 39) p.70. 48 ibid: 64. 49 Straddling the border of theoretical and practical realms, aesthetic reflective judgement thus constitutes a middle articulation (Mittelglied) specific to neither. Focusing on this Kantian “gulf” and its corresponding indeterminacies, Derrida describes aesthetic judgement in terms of the impossible mediation of theoretical and practical domains:

“Since the Mittleglied also forms the articulation of the theoretical and the practical… we are plunging into a place that is neither theoretical nor practical or else both theoretical and practical. Art (in general), or rather the beautiful, if it takes place, is inscribed here. But this here, this place is announced as a place deprived of place. It runs the risk, in taking place, of not having its own proper domain… The Mittleglied, intermediary member, must in effect be treated as a separable part, a particular part (als ein besonderer Theil). But also as a nonparticular, nondetachable part, since it forms the articulation between two others; one can even say, anticipating Hegel, an originary part (Ur-teil).”

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[Derrida, cited in Cascardi (note 39) p. 38]

Pursuing the border metaphor further, the indeterminacy of aesthetic judgement in Kant can be associated with the larger project of boundary distinction which governs his entire critical oeuvre (ibid: 72). 50 The “fissure” or “gap” between the realm of moral freedom and the causality of nature, which aesthetic reflective judgement is called upon to bridge, implies a “legislative, judicial fiction” based on the idea that the faculties of cognition delimit “territories” and “realms” over which they exercise governance [Cascardi (note 39) p. 76]. The realm of the “ungrounded” aesthetic, contrary to Adorno and Horkheimer’s deep wartime pessimism, is thus recuperated as a potentially key site of emancipation: the space of a radical and truly transnational democratic politics [T. Adorno and M. Horkheimer. Dialectic of Enlightenment (New York: Seabury Press 1972); E. Laclau and C. Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics (London: Verso 1985); J. Butler, E. Laclau and S. Zizek, Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left (London: Verso 2000)]. Despite his anguished claim that “the nation-state today remains the only concrete terrain and framework for political struggle”, the former position has also recently been conceded by F. Jameson, ‘Globalization and Political Strategy’, New Left Review 4 (2000) p. 65]. But framed as the product of an evolving cultural and spatial politics requiring sustained, purposive human agency, the emergent post-Westphalian trans-national civic order is not quite so “immanent” as some authors would have it [Linklater (note 32) p.120]. 51 A reasonable objection to this line of thinking is that it avoids the issue of systemic, macro-economic effects conditioning social relations within the Euregio borderlands (ie, reflected in a neo-liberal agenda restructuring regional, national and supra-state scales of territorial governance) [E. Swyngedouw, ‘The Mammon Quest: “Glocalisation”, Interspatial Competition and the Monetary Order – the Construction of New Scales’, in M. Dunford and G. Kafkalas (eds.), Cities and Regions in the New Europe (New York: Belhaven Press 1992); N. Brenner, ‘Beyond State-centrism? Space, Territoriality, and Geographical Scale in Globalization Studies’ Theory and Society 28 (1999a) 39-78; N. Smith, ‘The Satanic Geographies of Globalization: Uneven Development in the 1990s’, Public Culture 10 (1997) pp. 169-192; M. Sparke, ‘From Geopolitics to Geoeconomics: Transnational State Effects in the Borderlands’, Geopolitics 3.2 (1998) pp. 61-97]. My argument here is that the very shift in scale from a national to a cross-border (and thus inter-state) context calls for new ways of articulating culture, space and economy in ways that depart from the “easy” coupling of instrumentalist market logics and national territories characterizing 18th and 19th century modernities [A. Gupta and J. Ferguson, ‘Beyond Culture: Space, Identity and the Politics of Difference’, Cultural Anthropology 7 (1992) pp. 6-23]. The continued role of the state in coordinating these novel territorial configurations thus shouldn’t distract us from considering how changes of spatial scale (Smith’s “jumping of scales”) has a mutually transformative impact on the neo-functionalist, state-centric epistemologies with which political-economic processes have traditionally been apprehended [contra D. Harvey, ‘From Managerialism to Entrepreneurialism: the Transformation in Urban Governance in Late Capitalism’, Geografiska Annaler, B/71 (1989) pp. 3-18; N. Brenner, ‘Globalisation as Reterritorialisation: the Re-scaling of Urban Governance in the European Union’ Urban Studies, 36/3 (1999b) pp. 431-451, n. 35]. Crucially, then, the cross-border milieu, in posing challenges to the form of state territoriality, cannot but affect its content. On this account, I cannot support Brenner’s contention that “contemporary processes of globalization [are] being superimposed and overlaid upon the global grid of state territorialities rather than signalling a unilinear erosion of territoriality as such” (ibid: n.1). 52 During the 1980s and 1990s such cross-border regimes have been established between Belgium and the Netherlands, Germany and France, Spain and France/Portugal, as well as Germany and its French/Swiss neighbors [M.J.G.A.M. Weerepas and A.H.M. Daniels, Travailleurs Frontaliers, les Pionniers du Marche Unique: Une Enquete sur la Problematique des Travailleurs Frontaliers entre la Belgique et les Pays-Bas (Eupen: IVR Maas-Rijn 1997) p. 31]. 53 Specifically, enshrined in Reglement No. 1408/71 du 14 juin, 1971, Relatif a l’Application du Regime de Securite Sociale aux Travailleurs et Independants Ainsi qu’aux Membres de Leur Famille se Deplacant dans la Communaute” [see Weerepas and Daniels (note 52) p. 34]. 54 Weerepas and Daniels (note 52) p.33. 55 ibid: 37.

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56 Hassink et. al. (note 9) pp. 63-83. 57 Vanneste (note 24). 58 http://www.euregio-mr.org/F/F3/F33/F335.htm (2000). 59 In the case of INTERREG-funded projects selected within the Province of Belgian Limburg, for instance, the share of co-financing is shared equally between FEDER and the provincial council. According to one INTERREG manager for the province, such an arrangement makes it easier to find partners within Belgian Limburg, especially from the private-sector, whose initial level of exposure is thereby limited [D. Plees, Bestuurssecretaris, Provincie Limburg. Personal communication. Hasselt, July 26 (2000)]. Such co-financing arrangements differ from one partner region to another. So, for this Belgian civil servant, German private-sector actors (“comically”) still want to participate in INTERREG despite the fact that they must on average pay 20 percent of matching funds for any given project. 60 Hassink et al (note 9) p.72. 61 Beerts (note 10). 62 Hassink et al (note 9) p.71. 63 M. Fromhold-Eisebeth, ‘Wissenschaft und Forschung als Regional Wirtschaftliches Potential? Das Beispiel von Rheinische-Westfalischer Technischer Hochschule und Region Aachen’, in Informationen und Materialien zur Geographie der Euregio Maas-Rhein (Aachen: Beiheft, Nr. 4. 1992). 64 R. Hassink, Regional Innovation Policy: Case-Studies from the Ruhr Area, Baden-Wurttemberg and the North East of England (PhD thesis at the University of Utrecht, Faculty of Geographical Sciences (Netherlands Geographical Studies 145 1992); G. Baeten, E. Swyngedouw and L. Albrechts, ‘Politics, Institutions and Regional Restructuring Processes: from Managed Growth to Planned Fragmentation in the Reconversion of Belgium’s Last Coal Mining Region’, Regional Studies 33.3 (1999) pp. 247-258. 65 Breuer (note 10). 66 Fromhold-Eisebeth (note 63). 67 Hassink et al (note 9) p.70. 68 A. Colard and C. Vandermotten, Atlas Economique de la Belgique (Bruxelles: Editions de l’Universite de Bruxelles 1995). 69 M. van Geenhuizen, B. van der Knaap and P. Nijkamp, ‘Transborder European Networking: Shifts in Corporate Strategy?’, European Planning Studies 4/6 (1996) pp. 671-682. 70 Stichting Maas-Rhein, Rapport Annuel 1996 (Maastricht: Stichting Euregio Maas-Rhein 1996). 71 ibid: 39. 72 For example, as regards the socio-economic budget for the entire Maas-Rhein Euregion during this period, each of the partner regions provided 50,000 florins (250,000 total); within the realm of the socio-cultural, each partner region provided 62,500 florins (312,000 total) (http://www.euregio-mr.org/F/F3/F34/F341.htm, 2000: 1). 73 T. Delaval, Conseiller, Euregio Meuse-Rhin-ASBL. Personal communication. Liege, July 28 (2000). 74 The Conseil Syndical Interregionaux (CSI) Meuse-Rhin, inspired by the example of the European Confederation of Labor Unions founded in 1973, represents the seven unions of the partner regions: the Algemeen Belgisch Vakverbond (ABVV), the Flemish Algemeen Christelijk Vakverbond (ACV), the Federation Generale du Travail de Belgique (FGTB), the Walloon Confederation des Syndicats Chretiens (CSC), the Dutch FNV (Federatie Nederlands Vakbeweging) and CNV (Christelijk Nationaal Vakverbond), and the German

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Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund (DGB) (http://www.euregio-mr.org/F/F3/F34/F344.htm, 2000: 6). Participating members of regional employment offices include the Vlaamse dienst voor Arbeidsbemiddeling en Beroepsopleiding (V.D.A.B.), the Regionale Bestuur Arbeidsvoorzieningen (R.B.A.), l’Office communautaire et regionale de la formation professionnelle et de l’Emploi (FOREM), GRABA Eupen, the Beschwerdestelle of the Stichting Euregio Maas-Rhein at Aachen, the Conseil Interregional des Syndicats (CIS) Meuse-Rhin, the Federation Euregionale des Employers Meuse-Rhin, and theArbeitsamt Aachen (Stichting Maas-Rhein, 1997: 76). 75 Stichting Maas-Rhein, Rapport Annuel 1996 (Maastricht: Stichting Euregio Maas-Rhein 1997). 76 Stichting Maas-Rhein, ‘Internal Memo: Nouvelle Structure de L’Euregio Meuse-Rhin’ (Maastricht 2000). 77 Organizations represented on the central bureau of the “round table’s” include the Euro-Info-Center of the IHK; transborder consumer advisory services; health insurance companies, associations of judges, notaries and attorneys; the immigration advisory bureau of SKSM/Caritas; VdK, the labor organizations DGB and CSI; the transborder community of Euro-counsellors; and private associations of cross-border workers (Stichting Euregio Maas-Rhein, 1996: 72). 78 Stichting Maas-Rhein (note 76) p.74. 79 A. (F.) Evers, Coordinator voor Provincie Limburg, Euregio Maas-Rijn. Personal communication. Maastricht, August 1 (2000). 80 English translation: “no leg of its own to stand on”. 81 Stichting Maas-Rhein (note 76). 82 Evers (note 79). This statement is qualified by the assertion that the previous structure of the Stichting represented “an important exercise”, in that through a system of “compulsory seating” politicians from the Social and Christian Democrats got to “know each other face to face” [Evers (note 79)]. This “geography of table manners” is important in another context, for it is at the lunches hosted for the gouverneurs of the Stichting’s Executive Committee “where usually projects are born”. For this reason, it is vital that such a gathering have a “relaxed atmosphere”; a “simple broodje (sandwich) lunch will not do” (ibid). 83 Evers (note 79). 84 Ibid. 85 Bellamy and Castiglione (note 46). 86 R.K. Ashley and R.J.B. Walker, ‘Reading Dissidence/Writing the Discipline: Crisis and the Question of Sovereignty in International Studies’, International Studies Quarterly 34 (1990) pp. 367-416. Criticizing the epistemological standpoints of both realist and idealist perspectives in international relations theory, Ashley and Walker contrast “theorizing in the register of desire” -- meant as a form of “territorializing” theory which seeks to affirm the boundaries of cognitive and moral thought – with “theorizing in the register of freedom”, defined as a “celebratory register in which such boundaries are called into question rather than established”. Exemplifying a form of “de-territorialized” thinking which I suggest may be applicable to our reflection on the Stichting, they go on to write that for such a theorist:

“… the practical site is one where paradoxes of space, time, and identity disturb and undo any attempt to live and act according to some semblance of sovereign territorial being. For this person, who must make her life but cannot make of it a triumph of religious desire, the problem might be posed thus: How might one proceed in a register of freedom to explore and test institutional limitations, in a way that sustains and expands the cultural spaces and resources enabling one to conduct one’s labors of self-making in just this register of freedom, further exploring and testing limitations?” (p.391)

87 Framed in this way, I purposely avoid the strategy of setting up a normative endpoint for the Euregios from which deviations can be “mapped”. Rather, the focus here is to show how in each instance cosmopolitical “freedom” is defined by an open-ended process that achieves its dignity in the very attempt at reaching

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transcendent universals, as elusive as this may be [Butler et al (note 50)]. In the end, it is perhaps this form of cosmopolitanism – grounded in a keen awareness of both the necessity and impossibility of genuine cross-border political community – which drives the Kantian cosmopolitan project in the borderlands [Malcomson (note 38)]. 88 In reflecting on the Stichting’s architectural form, the author is reminded by a comment from one INTERREG manager: “This building is very easy to defend, there are only two access points. For this reason it often plays host to top-level meetings, such as NATO summits” [Evers (note 79)]. 89 M. de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press 1984). 90 Serres (note 1). “Who is master here? Who servant?” Following Michel Serres who, in Le parasite (1980), suggests through the metaphor of “good table manners” how Rousseau is able to win daily bread from his patron with words, thus overturning the master-slave dialectic and establishing a new moral “technique” of inter-societal relations, I propose an alternative to the gouverneur’s lunch table reunions and their implicit exclusionary hierarchies. The question is thus posed: who, as Nietzsche forwarned, is to be the “uninvited guest” at the Euregional gouverneur’s luncheon? 91 J. Der Derian and M. Shapiro (eds.), International/Intertextual Relations: Postmodern Readings of World Politics (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books 1989). 92 M. Bull, Seeing Things Hidden: Apocalypse, Vision and Totality (London: Verso 1999). 93 M. Serres, Le Tiers-Instruit (Paris: Francois Bourin 1991).